Frisco Kid

Cagney tames the Barbary Coast
Although Cagney himself did not care for this film,( he called it dreck ) it is still an entertaining rollicking movie. Cagney plays Bat Morgan a penniless sailor, who after a series of incidents becomes ruler of the coast. His leading lady is the beautiful and talented Margaret Lindsay. His nemesis is Barton MacLane playing his usual cretinous brute,and the equally brutal and despicable villian of the thirties Fred Kohler. One of the highlights is the fight to the death Cagney has with Kohler. It is a savage and merciless fight and for its time very real. In the movie Cagney starts out as a nice guy with hardluck, but later decides its a dog eat dog world and so becomes a part of the corruption in order to survive. The film is action packed with fights, riots and vigilante mobs. Lloyd Bacons direction is assured and smooth and keeps the action moving. The film falters a bit with the love scenes, but then it picks right up with its tension filled action. The print is the best that is...

Frisco Kid
I've been looking for this DVD for years. It's one of my favorite James Cagney movies. It's a great narrative about life on the Barbary Coast, and shows the life styles of the City Fathers attempt to clean up the Coast.

Cagney rises above rather mediocre material
This film starts out rather implausibly. Sailor Bat Morgan (James Cagney) wanders into a Barbary Coast saloon and almost gets shanghaied by a trio dedicated to that business. He does manage to escape and is helped by a kindly Jewish tailor (George E. Stone as Sully Green). What's rather implausible is that Sully basically has to teach a sailor that has docked in the port of San Francisco what shanghaiing is and that the Barbary Coast is dangerous. Really? A seasoned sailor docking in San Francisco has never heard of the Barbary Coast or shanghaiing or why it is profitable for criminals? You'd think Bat Morgan was a common tourist from the Midwest with a defective GPS. What happens next was a little off-putting for a Cagney fan like myself. Naturally, Cagney's character decides to go back to the bar and teach those three thugs a lesson. How he did it left a bad taste in my mouth. Bat shanghais the shanghai-er as he is getting ready to take yet another unconscious victim to a ship. But...

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